I’ve posted the first part of my report on Francois Bar’s presentation last Thursday at the Annenberg Center’s DIY Media seminar, on the subject of appropriation of mobile communication media in Latin America:

If appropriation is the process by which people adopt and repurpose technologies (and media) to their own needs, then cannibalization is the root-source of cultural appropriation. So claimed Francois Bar on April 12, when he presented his current research at the DIY Media seminar at the Annenberg Center for Communication . Bar, with Francis Pisani and Matthew Weber, has been studying in particular the way people in Latin America have found their own uses for mobile phone technologies.

“In recent years, mobile phone penetration has increased dramatically throughout Latin America,” Bar noted, adding, “But rising penetration numbers only tell part of the story. To fully grasp the social, economic and political impact of mobile telephony, we need to understand appropriation: the process through which mobile phone users go beyond mere adoption to make the technology their own and to embed it within their social, economic, and political practices. The appropriation process fundamentally is a negotiation about power and control over the configuration of the technology, its uses, and the distribution of its benefits. Within the Latin American context, today’s negotiation surrounding mobile technological appropriation echoes earlier creative tensions about the appropriation of cultural objects, people, and ideas from abroad.”

I’ve posted the first part of my report on Francois Bar’s presentation last Thursday at the Annenberg Center’s DIY Media seminar, on the subject of appropriation of mobile communication media in Latin America:
If appropriation is the process by which people adopt and repurpose technologies (and media) to their own needs, then cannibalization is the root-source [...]